My parents taught me that when you make a mistake that hurts other people, you should apologize for it.

We owe a Big Apology when it comes to Iraq.

Now that President Obama has announced all America troops will be out of Iraq by the end of this year (we don't count the thousands of diplomats, private contractors, mercenaries and covert operatives left behind) perhaps that final troop withdrawal might be the proper time for our government to apologize for our horrifically tragic nine-year error.

We should start with a meaningful apology to the people of Iraq for our ill-conceived, illegal and immoral invasion of a sovereign country that never hurt or threatened us. We certainly owe an apology to the hundreds of thousands of dead,
injured and permanently maimed Iraqis and their families, as well as the
2.5 million who fled their country. In a fair world, George W. Bush,
Dick Cheney and their cohorts would go to prison for fabricating and
manipulating intelligence data to make a case for their war of choice.
In the real world we live in now, an apology would be a good start.

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Vietnam 1975: The retreat from another unnecessary war by Hubert Van Ess, UPI photographer

Next we should apologize to the nearly 4500 American soldiers killed there
and to their families, as well as to the tens of thousands of injured
and permanently maimed troops for sending them into this unnecessary and
worthless occupation. We know we will be paying for their medical, psychiatric, and related care for decades to come, but we can
at least say "I'm sorry."

We certainly owe an apology to
countries like Germany and France (remember "freedom fries" and
boycotting French wine) who we criticized for not supporting our rush to war. We need to apologize to the United Nations for defying
Security Council opposition to the invasion. And we should offer a "mea
culpa" to the millions of protesters here and abroad who took to the
streets in 2003 in a vain attempt to convince us not to invade Iraq.

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We
surely need to apologize to the people of Afghanistan who have had to
endure a poorly run American invasion and occupation put on the back
burner in the rush to invade and occupy Iraq. Because of the
diversion of attention and resources in Iraq, the Afghani people have
suffered a more prolonged and mismanaged occupation with no end in
sight.

While we're at it, our government should apologize to the
tens of millions of Americans who, because of the one trillion (and
probably much more) dollars spent thus far in Iraq, have had to do with
less education, health care, and other underfunded government services,
not to mention a tanking economy and massive public debt.

There
are many more apologies our government should offer, and an apology
isn't nearly enough for the damage we've caused. And realistically,
apologies aren't likely even to be offered. Politically it wouldn't sit
well with the right-wing "American exceptionalism" crowd, who would
attack such an idea as weak and deferential.

Our country
screwed up big time in Iraq, and caused a massive amount of unnecessary
death and destruction in the process. Let's hope at some point we will
be grown up enough to acknowledge our mistake and tell the world, "We,
the United States of America, are truly sorry."